Doctoral Dissertation Research: Modernization, Health, and Development in the Global Cold War

本研究将探讨在为四种不同类型的组织确定适当医疗技术方面出现的困难：非营利性基金会、联合国多边组织、双边援助组织（如美国国际开发署）和政府承包商。这个项目将审查发展中国家的受援国在历史上如何积极争夺和谈判适当技术的定义。它将探讨他们作为一些技术设计者的角色，以及倡导采用这些技术的政策。该项目将审议外援中的技术转让对妇女的影响往往不同于对男子的影响，特别是在小规模日常保健技术方面。它将引起发展工作者、公民和决策者的兴趣，因为它可能有助于确保发展技术是适当的。从一开始，发展和现代化的研究就与技术问题联系在一起。发展批评人士经常指出某些技术的过度使用或其他技术的不可获得性。然而，这些主张的基础是一种假设，即必须有一种更适当的技术水平，才能导致更好的经济和社会发展。本研究将探讨是什么使给定的技术合适。它将使用口述历史访谈、档案材料以及在南非和津巴布韦当前卫生技术项目现场的参与性观察。通过这项工作，本研究将考虑历史先例如何在现代的发展实践中发挥作用，并将使发展专业人员和政策制定者了解在外援工作中使用卫生技术对他们打算服务的社区产生影响的具体方式。

This study will look at the difficulties that arise in defining appropriate medical technologies for four different types of organizations: non-profit foundations, multilateral United Nations-based organizations, bilateral aid organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development, and government contractors. This project will examine how recipients in developing countries have historically actively contested and negotiated the definition of appropriate technology. It will explore their role as designers of some of the technologies and the policies advocating for their adoption. This project will consider how technology transfer in foreign aid often affects women differently than men, specifically when looking at small-scale everyday health technologies. It will be of interest to development workers, citizens and policymakers because it could contribute to ensuring that development technologies are appropriate. From its inception, the study of development and modernization has been bound up with questions of technology. Development critics often point to the over-use of certain technologies or the unavailability of others. Yet underlying these claims is the assumption that there must be a more appropriate level of technology that would lead to better economic and social development. This study will explore what makes a given technology appropriate. It will use oral history interviews, archival materials, and participant observation at the sites of current-day health technology projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Through this work, this study will consider how historical precedents have and have not carried through development practice in the modern day and will inform development professionals and policymakers of the specific ways in which the use of health technologies in foreign aid work have impacted the communities they intend to serve.